Hey, everyone! As you can see above, it's packed to the gills now that the doors are open to the public. I'm actually editing this in now as 11:26am, almost an hour and a half after doors opened, and there is still a huge line of people waiting to enter. I'm stopping in early to get up an article so I can spend the rest of the day cosplay hunting. That seems to be the most requested thing about TGS, and now that the convention is open to the public, I should be able to get a bunch of interesting shots. For now, let's take a look at some of the merchandise they have on sale!

A head-on shot of the Hina Chocobo Box. I made a short video demo of how it works that you can check out in a previous post. The paint job on it is very nice and altogether, it's very much worth the 1,500 yen price tag. I would actually prefer many more of these kinds of goods over expensive stuff like the rings and dog tags.

Here are some Final Fantasy Trading Arts Mini figures. I really wanted to pick up the Vivi one, but they don't appear to be available quite yet. At most of the stores, you pick up an "order form" that lists all of the merchandise avaiiable inside the shop. While you browse, you write down the amount of each item you want. Once you have decided on all your items, you bring the sheet to the front, and the staff retrieves your merchandise from the storage area. These figures, as well as the TaruTaru below, were not listed.

In the same case, Square Enix displayed the upcoming Taru Taru figures. These were also printed in one of the magazines Square Enix was giving out. Unfortunately, they are are slated for a "Spring 2010" release, much later than Jan/Feb, which was anticipated by online merchants. Getting shots of these was rather tricky, too. Besides using an iPhone, there was some gross slime on the case, as if someone licked it or something, that made everything turn out extra blurry. I'll probably retake these today and try for better shots.

This store was only loosely related to Final Fantasy in that it was an "item shop" that contained different clothing and accessories with RPG stats printed on them. There was a パーカ+3 (Parka+3) that had several stats on the lower back. You can also see レア装備 (Rare Equip) and Lv.30魔法使い (Level 30 Magic User). There were many buttons as well, and even metal rings with stats like "Intelligence +3."

I ended up buying a black 防御力+1 (Defense +1) t-shirt. I'm wearing it at the show today. The print on many of the shirts is done in 8-bit style, so it can be hard to read up close. You can make out the 防 and 力 fairly well, but the middle is a garbled mess. I assumed it was 防御 (bou-gyo), like in Final Fantasy, but the merchandise list said 防衛 (bou-ei). Then I buy the shirt, and it turns out is was 防御 (bou-gyo) like I thought. Both words mean "defense," so perhaps someone at the shop could barely read it either. The perils of kanji.